


Rites of Winter

by Emma



Series: The Celtic Men [3]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:37:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma/pseuds/Emma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter King and his Consort celebrate Solstice in an unusual way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rites of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU where Gwen and Owen were killed by Gray. So if you want to know why Martha is married to Rhys and Jack and Ianto have a CP and two adopted daughters, you may want to read _Evolution_ and _Bred in the Bone_ first

      The scent of coffee – with cream and a dusting of cinnamon, if his nose did not mislead him – drifted into Jack’s consciousness and tugged him into the light of day. He wasn’t allowed coffee, dammit! Ianto was usually more sensitive to Jack’s deprivation and drank his first morning cup in the kitchen. Why was he bringing coffee into the bedroom when Jack was most vulnerable?

      He groaned and tried to turn, but his belly got in the way. At seven months, he was bigger than most women at full term, but, since he was carrying twins, it was not at all surprising. Just bloody uncomfortable.

      “Let me help,” his husband, the smug bastard that had got him in this condition, sat behind him, propping him up. “We have a treat for you.”

      Jack opened one eye, just enough to catch a glimpse of Pansy holding a breakfast tray with what looked like his favorite things in it, down to the mug of coffee: toasted bara brith with a small crock of salted butter next to it, two nicely crisped rashers of bacon, and a bowl of mixed fruit. The sight brightened his morning considerably and he sat up, stretching.

      “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

      “It’s a very special day today. Pansy asked Martha for a dispensation and she said okay for one meal. I know how much you like breakfast, so I made a Royal decision.” Taking the tray from Pansy, he set it on the table by the windows that overlooked the back yard and the park beyond. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

      Pansy helped Jack to his feet. As Jack’s pregnancy had progressed, she had appointed herself his personal maid, assistant, and bodyguard. Objections on Jack’s part had been met with unruffled _yes,Your Highness… of course, Your Highness…_ and then she ignored him and went on her way doing what she thought best. Jack had finally given in, not without a little grumbling, though Ianto noticed that he had gotten used to Pansy's presence in a remarkably short period of time. They all had. Gwen and Rosie loved their Auntie Pansy and spent hours following her around.

      Jack wolfed down the fruit and the bacon, but lingered over toast and coffee. “What's the schedule for tonight?”

      “There's the Gathering, starting at sunset. Everyone is expected, appropriate clothing has been delivered. Grandmother and Lady Modron have got the bit in their teeth. It’s the first Solstice in a thousand years when they’ve had both Kings. At around ten or so you’ll go to at Bryn Cader Faner to Crown the stones with holly. We’ll meet you there. Then, at midnight, there’s the official transfer of power from Summer to Winter.” Ianto brushed his fingers over Jack’s distended belly. “Are you sure you’re up for it?"

      “Of course I am.” Jack took Ianto’s hand and pressed it to his lips. “Don’t worry so much, Ianto.”

      “All right. I’ll have to leave early. I have some rituals of my own to go through.” He grimaced. “You will be in the Women’s Court today, Jack. It’s…”

      “I know.” Jack laughed. “I’m a Consort, and a pregnant one at that. The Tylwyth are having some trouble dealing with me."

      “The Small Ones don’t seem to.”

      “Considering they’re partially responsible for my condition, or at least Puck is, the least they can do is act as if this were normal!”

      They finished breakfast. Ianto left for the Hub – Jack had been taken off duty once his belly made it difficult to even sit for long periods of time – and Jack lay about desultorily reading whatever was at hand and flipping through the cable channels.

      The house was unusually quiet; Gwen, Rosie, and all the assorted cousins were already installed in Modron’s castle, “helping” with the holiday preparations. Pansy had brought in a crew and they were engaged in an orgy of cleaning, from attic to basement, but somehow there was little noise generated, except for a low background _hummmm_ that lulled him into a doze. Every hour or so she would appear with some sort of herbal tea with lemon and honey that eased his stomach discomfort, and would chat briefly while giving him the expert once-over. Jack had a sneaky feeling he was being managed, but was feeling too good to get worked up about it.

      At around four in the afternoon, Pansy woke him and helped him to the bathroom. Jack had definitely put his foot down about being bathed by anyone other than Ianto, but Pansy refused to leave him alone when Ianto was not around. She sat on the edge of the long wall-mounted unit that supported the twin basins Ianto had insisted on, towel in hand, waiting for Jack to step out of the shower. When he did she toweled him briskly, then made sure he was completely dry by creating a warm draft that circled his body. Jack had to admit it was one hell of an advantage to someone who could barely see his toes, much less touch them.

      Once dried, she helped him into loose unbelted trousers and a long tunic in a rich brown fabric embroidered on the sleeves and collar with the symbols of Winter: holly, mistletoe, snowdrops, and peregrine falcons on the wing, all picked out in silver. Over it went a long, warm cloak, and on his forehead, his Consort’s crown.

      He had teased Ianto about the crown, but he had been startled to realize that he indeed had one, and was expected to wear it. It was actually a silver circlet made to resemble braided holly branches, the leaves carved from rare deep-green garnets and the berries made of rubies. Spaced evenly through the base of the circlet were large translucent opals that flashed fire each time Jack moved his head.

      “Are we ready, Your Highness?” Pansy took Jack’s hand. “We are running a little late, I think. You spent a little too much time preening!”

      “Cheeky! But I do look good, don’t I?”

      “Yes, Your Highness,” she answered, her inflection perfectly imitating Ianto’s at his snarkiest. “You do indeed.”

      She opened a Path and in a few minutes they were stepping into the High Hall of Moel-y-Gaer, Andy’s family home. Tosh waddled up to meet them. She was only six months along, but with her slight frame, the weight was threatening to unbalance her. She wore her robes of office too, including the diadem of primrose blossoms made out of citrines, sapphires, and topazes with jade leaves.

      “There you are!” She examined Jack carefully. “You look ready to pop!”

      “Not yet.” Jack kissed her cheek. “You look radiant.”

      “Pregnancy suits me. Who would have believed it?” She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Come on, we’re expected inside.”

      “Inside” was the vast gallery that ran all along one side of the High Hall. The place was full of women wearing their most elegant robes and jewelry. Jack spotted his daughters, both wearing Winter’s colors, like himself, and circlets of real holly. Gwen, always tall and slender for her age, looked almost like a tylwyth teg. And there was Martha, looking magnificent in deep gold, with a simple braided circlet mounted with multicolored star sapphires matching her shoulder pins. She waved at him and started to make her way through the crowd.

      “Jack, what’s wrong?” Tosh asked.

      “Nothing, why?”

      “You keep rubbing the small of your back.”

      Jack was startled to realize that his right hand was kneading at a spot slightly below his waist. As he did he became aware of a dull ache spreading across his lower back. “I think I'm going to ask Martha to stay close tonight. The last time I was pregnant I started having false labor pains at around this time too.”

      One word to Martha and he ended up with an entourage: Martha, Pansy, and a half dozen other Small Ones. Even the Lady Achren seemed to have a occasion to be near him more often than was absolutely necessary. After being kingless for a thousand years, the Winter Court was not about take any risks. He was hustled to the far end of the room to sit in the dais beneath the Winter banner, Tosh at his side under the Summer's, an honor guard behind them.

      This Solstice's Gathering was joyful as even those whose families had long ago left to settle in other places came home to celebrate the prospective births of future Kings. Baby presents wrapped in colorful cloth or paper piled up at Jack's and Tosh's feet. The pry'ddion had composed special songs for the occasion and sung them alongside the old traditional ballads. Small Ones circulated with trays of food and drink. All in all, not a bad party, Jack thought, and he would enjoy it more if the damn ache on his lower back would let up a little.

      A few minutes before ten, a gong sounded deep inside the castle, followed by a fanfare played on an instrument that Jack would have bet half his savings was the ancestor of bagpipes everywhere in this world. Men arrived to join the women. Jack and Tosh were ceremoniously helped down to take their place in the crowd. Children and Small Ones distributed holly and mistletoe wreaths and snowdrop posies to everyone as they assembled, Summer Court in front of the Consorts, Winter Court behind. Finally, another blast on the bagpipes and one of the outside walls of the hall seemed to disappear and a broad Path materialized.

      It was a short walk, which was all to the good, as Jack's back was getting more painful by the minute. He decided to ask Pansy how soon he could gracefully bow out of the festivities. She was walking closely behind him, with the Torchwood mini-horde gathered around her. The children's faces were alight with happiness as Gwen led the younger ones in the steps of a Walking dance. Not wanting to dampen their mood, he decided to wait a while longer.

      The stones appeared as tall shadows in the starlit sky. As the leading edge of the procession reached the broad avenue leading up to them, the Puck appeared holding aloft a torch. The crowd poured between the two lines of oaks following the light, parting into two as they reached the wood henge, a double line of waist-high stakes tipped with carved flowers and fruit that created two broad semicircular avenues around the stones. Jack and Tosh's retinue led them on towards the center circle, past another set of avenues created from blue sarsen stones finely carved with peregrines and snowflakes. Jack didn't need to look to know those following behind them had entered those avenues.

      As they reached the center circle more torches flared, and in the sudden light Jack saw Ianto and Andy, robed and crowned. It was at that moment that Jack finally accepted the true meaning of these events. Somewhere in his mind, the fifty-first century space traveler had thought of these things – the ritual combats, the complex ceremonies – as ways to disguise the technology that undergird them. But now, seeing Ianto in his robes, starlight glinting in his massive silver crown, he understood in his heart as well as his mind that the ritual and ceremonies _were_ the technology of a race so different, so alien, that everything he knew turned on its head. And these people were now his, by the nature of their relationship with Earth and his relationship with their human King.

      He followed Pansy as she led him to his place across from Ianto. His husband smiled as his eyes slid to Jack's belly, speculation written all over his face, but they were distracted by the entrance of the Holly Maidens, carrying their burden of greenery. They sang as they wove in and out of the sharply angled stones, draping them in garlands as their mothers and grandmothers had done before them. In a few more years, Jack knew, their own daughters would Dance the Holly Maiden, and a few more years after that they would slip away from the henge after the ceremony with some boy or girl to celebrate the Transfer in private.

      As the last stone was draped, and almost as if it were a signal, the dull ache in Jack's back flared into a vicious stab. He gasped before he could stop himself, and the sound was loud in the sudden silence. Pansy stepped closer and laid her palm on the underside of his belly; after a few seconds she raised her face and called out in the thrill-song language of the Small Ones.

      Martha left the place in the second circle and rushed up. “Jack..."

      He clutched at her. “You have to stop this. The babies aren't ready yet, it's too soon!”

      “Nay,Your Highness.” Puck popped out of midair next to them. “If Lady Martha uses her instruments she will tell you that there has been considerable change since the last time she examined you.” 

      He held out a hand and Martha's instrument bag appeared in it. She took it and pulled out the scanner John Hart had cobbled up for her use right after Jack's pregnancy had been announced. She passed it over his stomach, read the results, frowned, re-calibrated the scanner and tried again.

      “Martha?” Ianto had left his place and was anxiously hovering. “What is it?”

      She looked up at him, puzzled. “According to this, the babies have grown the equivalent of six weeks since last Thursday. That's... not normal. We have to get Jack back to the Hub or we could lose the babies.”

      “Nay, my Lady. The babies are safe and sound, and wait only for the world's summons.”

      “Then it's even more important that we get Jack to the Hub. He doesn't have the equipment to give birth naturally. We need to do a caesarian.”

      Another sharp pain had Jack doubling over and gasping for air. “We need to make a decision quickly!”

      “My lady Remembrance, if I may,” Puck laid his hand on Martha's arm. “We can help you here as we could not if the Consort was surrounded by cold steel.”

      Martha studied him for a moment. “All right. We need a place for him to lay on...”

      Puck waved at the altar stone in the middle of the circle. “He will be well protected there. Thousands of years of magick have leached into that stone.”

They helped Jack to the stone, but he couldn't raise himself high enough to even sit on it. Ianto and Andy picked him up and lay him down. Jack noticed that Andy was smiling through tears, the same look he had had the day of his wedding when Toshiko had walked down the aisle towards him. Standing behind him, Tosh was looking much more worried.

      As he was placed on the stone, the Small Ones began to sing. It was a simple, soothing song, nothing like their usual complex ballads, and its simplicity sank into Jack's heart. Even though it was winter, the stone below him was warm, and its heat seemed to help the ache in his back. He took Ianto's hand in his.  


      “I'm sorry. Your first Solstice celebration and...”

      “I think this was meant to happen, Jack.” Ianto pressed his lips to Jack's, then giggled a little unsteadily. “How like you to upstage everyone once again.”

      Jack's laugh ended in a gasp. “I think your children want to be born right now.”

      “Well, then, let's let them.”

      Jack lay back and closed his eyes. There was more music now; a second song, this one by the Tylwyth, that seemed a variation and commentary on the one the Small Ones were singing. It had been started by a single voice, almost like a prayer, and then was picked up by more and more until everyone was singing. There was a surging joy in it, a welcome and a thanksgiving, and somehow he understood that the children he carried were the answer to a prayer these people had prayed for centuries.

      Pansy stood behind him and pressed her small hands to his temple. He gasped as the songs seemed to pour directly into his head. He closed his eyes and barely felt his clothes being stripped away, or Martha's scalpel as it made the first incision. It was uncomfortable, but no more. 

      He felt Martha reach in and take the first baby. He opened his eyes, then, and saw Puck wipe its tiny body with soft flannel towels and then lift him over his head as he shouted something to the assembled crowd, who erupted in joyful shouts.

      “He's telling them it's a boy,” Andy whispered from behind Ianto. “He says the Winter Crown has an heir.”

      Jack laughed. Neither he nor Ianto had wanted to know the sex of the babies, though Martha had known from the first scan, and he suspected the Small Ones knew also. Pansy had told him that as long as the child was of his body, a girl would do, as she could produce children of her own, and so could Ianto's sister Angharad and her husband John. But it was satisfying to know he had given Ianto his heir.

      The song began again, but this time it had accompaniment. Somewhere the midnight bells began to ring, and in the snowy hillside beyond the henge the pipers started to pipe in the Winter King's Season; Jack had asked Puck why it wasn't done at the Equinoxes, and Puck had told him that it was important that the Kings understood each season, not only his own. Then Jack felt Martha take the other child from him. He watched as Puck went through the same ritual as before. This time the shouts were almost deafening.

      “Another boy,” Andy translated, although he didn't need to. “One born before the pipes and one after. That Transferred power rather neatly.”

      “Well, next year it goes back to the old method,” Jack retorted as he watched his sons being examined by Martha. “We have two girls and two boys. The tubes are officially tied.”

      Ianto, Andy, and Toshiko laughed. Pansy merely snorted as she marched over to Martha and Puck. Taking the babies from them, he brought them over to their parents, handing one to each.

      “Your heir, Your Majesty,” she said as she handed one bundle to Ianto. “We ask you to consider Naming him Caer'Gaeaf, the fortress of winter. And this is your second son,” she passed the other bundle to Jack, “and we ask you to consider Naming him Gwalch'Gaeaf, the hawk of winter.”

      Ianto and Jack traded looks. Jack nodded. “And so it shall be,” Ianto said and his voice carried effortlessly throughout the circles. “And to the outside world they shall be Owain, to honor one of our own who died in battle, and Rhys, for one we almost lost and was returned to us.”

      As the crowd erupted in cheers and song, Jack lay back on the warm stone, smiling to himself. Martha came up, drying her hands.

      “You're already healing. In three or four days you don't even have a scar. Now, then,” she pulled her cell phone out from somewhere in her robe, “I promised a certain someone I would call him as soon as the babies were born... Hello, Doctor... no, nothing's wrong... as a matter of fact, everything is brilliant!”” 


End file.
